Posted on 01/12/2002 9:29:12 PM PST by oioiman
ON JULY 5, 1995, Enron Corporation donated $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Six days later, Enron executives were on a trade mission with Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor to Bosnia and Croatia. With Kantor's support, Enron signed a $100 million contract to build a 150-megawatt power plant.
Enron, then a growing giant in energy trading, practically had a reserved seat on Clinton administration trade junkets. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who egregiously linked political donations to government assistance, accompanied Enron chairman Ken Lay on a mission to India. Enron president Joseph Sutton was on the trip to Bosnia during which Brown lost his life in a plane crash (Sutton was not on Brown's plane at the time). After Brown's death, Enron's Terence Thorn, a $1,000 donor to the Clinton-Gore campaign, traveled with Commerce Secretary William Daley to South Africa. Ken Lay also traveled with Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary on her trade trips.
There were other contacts between Enron and the Clinton administration. Ken Lay was a close friend of Mack McLarty, Clinton's first chief of staff. In his 1993 disclosure statement, Robert Rubin listed Enron as one of the firms with which he had had "significant contact" while at Goldman Sachs. Enron was represented by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, the firm where Clinton advisers Robert Strauss and Vernon Jordan worked.
And Enron benefited from its government contacts during the Clinton years. After Lay's trip to India with Ron Brown, Enron received nearly $400 million in U.S. government assistance so that it could build a power plant south of Bombay. According to reports in the Houston Chronicle at the time, the Export-Import Bank kicked in $298 million, while another federal agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, put up $100 million.
In February 1995, David Sanger of the New York Times wrote a fascinating insider account of how the deal had been consummated. Enron had been the lead bidder to build the new power plant. Jeff Garten, then undersecretary of commerce for international trade, created what he called "our economic war room" to push the American firm's interests. The State and Energy departments were enlisted to press Enron's case. According to Sanger, the U.S. ambassador to India, Frank Wisner, "constantly cajoled Indian officials." The CIA performed some risk analysis and investigated rival British companies.
Clinton himself was involved in starting the India effort for Enron. According to Michael Weisskopf of Time, Clinton scrawled a note to McLarty telling him to help with the project. Support for the Bombay power plant was just a small part of the help Enron received from the Clinton administration. All told, Enron received over $4 billion from OPIC and the Export-Import Bank for projects in Turkey, Bolivia, China, the Philippines, and elsewhere.
Under Clinton, the Commerce Department was proud that it was finally using the might of the U.S. government to assist favored firms. But the enterprise was plagued by constant criticism that somehow it always seemed to be big political donors that got most of the help. According to the Boston Globe, all but three of the recipients of OPIC aid during Brown's tenure were substantial Democratic donors. According to a study by the Center for Public Integrity, Enron, U.S. West, GTE, McDonnell Douglas, and Fluor donated a combined $563,000 to the Democratic party during 1993 and 1994 and received $2.6 billion in foreign contracts secured with government help. The Globe found that during the first Clinton term, 27 firms had donated $2.3 million to the Democrats and received nearly $5.5 billion in federal support.
All of this is not to deny that Enron was primarily a Republican donor. Nor is it to minimize the connections between Enron and the Bush administration. Rather, the connections between the Clintonites and Enron remind us that the scandal is not the donations. The scandal is what gets done by federal officials in return for the donations. And while the Clintonites received less money from Enron than the Republicans, the evidence thus far suggests that Democrats extended more favors to Enron than Republicans. That suggests that the nascent Enron scandal may not end up helping Democrats as much as they now think.
Make no mistake, though: The press corps is in full frenzy over what the Bush administration may or may not have done to help Enron as it was going down the tubes--though there is no evidence the Bush administration did anything beyond take phone calls from desperate Enron executives. But the real story here is not about lawbreaking or extraordinary behavior. It is about what has become standard practice in Washington every day.
When corporations make political donations, the money is generally not used to lobby for free market reforms--although Enron did some of that. Rather, the money is used to encourage French-style dirigisme. It is used to lure government into bed with private commercial interests. That's not an effect conservatives should cheer.
Game, set, and match !
Clintooon did plenty to help Lay and enron and Bush did squat.
I think this falls to the old maxim "You can't prove a negative"
Who did what for whom, whilst they were president / held a Fed Gov. office ? Hmmmmmm ... ? And, is it your contention, that people , in private life, who are related to a past president , or other office holder, NOT do business with anyone ?
Maybe you should just take you naive self off such threads, since they so stimulate your imagination. : - )
How many boogymen are hiding under your bed; or are they in the closet ?
Some background on this, as provided by Freeper financeprof on another thread...
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1. In April, 1993, the CFTC, headed by Wendy Gramm, exempted a variety of over-the-counter energy derivatives transactions from some requirements under the commodity exchange act. This was part of a broader effort by the CFTC to eliminate legal uncertainty for over-the-counter transactions. The actions involving energy derivatives followed other CFTC actions involving OTC interest rate and currency derivatives. The CFTC granted no special favors to the energy industry in general or Enron in particular. The regulations in question had their origins in the 1920s and were completely inappropriate to modern financial markets.
2. Enron wasn't Enron in 1993. That is to say, it wasn't nearly as big, important, and influential back then. There is little reason to believe that the CFTC was unduly influenced by Enron. A lot of other firms favored the new regulatory structure.
3. Wendy Gramm's "big money job" in 1993 was $22,000 in director's compensation.
4. In 2000, Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. This also revised the regulatory structure for energy and other OTC derivatives. Phil Gramm was involved in this as head of the Senate Banking Committee. So was Richard Lugar, head of the Senate Ag Committee (which has jurisdiction over the CFTC). It was passed as an attachment to a budget bill.
5. There is no evidence whatsoever that Enron's collapse was connected in any way to the 1993 exemptions or the 2000 Modernization Act. Enron didn't collapse because it speculated wildly in energy derivatives. It collapsed in large part because it speculated wildly in bandwidth, water, and foreign power plants. Although Enron is known primarily as an energy company, its demise is more directly attributable to the collapse of the telecom sector (think Lucent, Global Crossing, and on and on) than anything involving the energy markets or the regulation thereof.
I have little sympathy for Wendy Gramm. She headed the audit committee of a company whose audits were a sham. For this she should be held accountable. However, these dark hints that she participated in a conspiracy to change regulations to favor a firm that subsequently rewarded her seem wide of the mark. The regulatory changes were defensible--indeed, they were correct. What happened subsequently is a different story altogether. She failed in her responsibilities as a director.
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The wind PTC [Production Tax Credit] was originally enacted as part of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 to advance the development of wind energy. The PTC, along with major advancements in wind energy technology, has helped drive down the cost of utility-scale wind power by more than 80 percent over the last 20 years. The PTC provides a 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour tax credit (adjusted for inflation) for electricity produced from a wind facility. Only wind facilities that are generating power sold into the market are eligible for the credit.The credit is currently set to expire on December 31, 2001. Extending the PTC will spur more development of wind-generated electricity thus helping avoid power shortages in the West, Midwest and Northeast. Greater use of wind energy also boosts rural economic development through land lease payments made to farmers and ranchers. These payments are typically in the range of $4000-$5000 per turbine, per year for 20 years!
For all of these reasons, I hope you will consider cosponsoring this important legislation to encourage the continued development of our domestic wind energy resources. To become a cosponsor of H.R. 876 and S. 530, please contact Senator Chuck Grassley's (R-IA) staff at (202) 224-3744.
I wonder if the loss of these tax credits had anything to do with Enron's demise.
I noticed a subtle change in the coverage of the Enron collapse once the media began to detour from the "pack" and uncovered some of this Clinton-Democrat-Enron material. Petey Jennings declared that this scandal will surely be bad news for the Bush administration "every day leading up to the election of 2002" (paraphrase). JD Whatshisname (R-AZ) pointed out on CNN's Crossfire that the democrat from Florida he was debating actually accepted money from Enron. It was a hoot!
It will be interesting to watch the talking head shows today to see how this story has matured.
Your opinion is welcome here. I have found that people who cannot distinguish opinion from fact are easily manipulated. Hence, the term "sheeple".
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